


and sometimes they come true

by emmram



Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Hurt Sam Winchester, Possession, Temporary Character Death, Whumptober 2020, i mean serious body horror you guys, season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26798074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: A series of Sam Winchester-focused Whumptober 2020 stories.Chap 1: Day 2: Kidnapping/Pick Who DiesChap 2: Day 4: Buried AliveChap 3: Day 6: Get It OutChap 4: Day 8: Isolatedsummary: set early s14.the Bunker is full of secrets. and so very, very old.aka: sam really shouldn’t be going exploring on his own.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953010
Comments: 9
Kudos: 30





	1. Kidnapping/Pick Who Dies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> summary: set in mid-s5. sam’s been a body before, and he will be a body again.
> 
> aka: creepy possession fic that’s mostly body horror! also, a very generous interpretation of the prompt :)
> 
> warnings: serious body horror i’m not even kidding you guys, temporary character death, possession, some disturbing imagery.

( _this is--it. we are… here_.)

When his thoughts settle enough to form coherent shapes, Sam is able to deduce that the thing inside him is not a demon. It’s definitely not an angel, because he can’t remember being asked anything at all, dream or otherwise; one moment, he was breaking into an abandoned hunting cabin in search of clues for their current hunt, and the next… 

( _ **here**_.)

The thing is, Sam knows how demonic possessions work, possibly more intimately than any human that’s lived in a long, long time. He knows from both being possessed and pulling demons out of other people that demons… _fill_ people, taking their shape like water and squeezing their consciousness to some tiny, ignored place. Everything from there is instinctual and seamless, like breathing. 

With this thing, though--

( _ **us**_ _. together._ )

There’s spaces in him that are empty, like his mind is a glove filled with something that has no idea what a hand even looks like. His vision shorts in and out, hazy and oddly coloured when it works. His joints move in unnatural angles as Sam wrestles for some semblance of control; his kneecaps are knocked sideways and his elbows crack when they’re twisted into shapes that shouldn’t be possible--there’s a point where the stress is overwhelming and a bone snaps, tearing through the skin. He feels the pain distantly, like a pebble through the sole of his shoe. His jaw is hanging open, tongue drooling, and his fingers twitch aimlessly, until whatever it is that’s in him can figure out how to use them.

Until then… it talks.

( _we are one. to move… to hunt… to_ ** _kill_** _._ )

Its voice resonates in his head, the clearest sensation in a muffled universe. It speaks with his voice, curling carefully over unfamiliar syllables but gaining confidence and speed quickly. 

( _you are new, strong, but full of holes._ ) there’s a pause. ( _full of… residue_.)

He turns abruptly, his neck cracking with the motion. His vision clears enough to see Dean sitting on the floor, his legs trapped underneath a large beam and blood caking one side of his face. He’s staring up at ( _them_ ) Sam in abject horror. Sam can’t remember the last time he’s seen his brother look so terrified.

(The last time he died, maybe.)

“Get _out_ of him!” Dean yells, but it isn’t a threat, or the kind of bravado that Sam has seen a million times before. Dean sounds _helpless_ , and something that feels like pleasure curls warmly inside him. 

( _his body doesn’t scream as loudly as yours. maybe it’s time to open and find out why_.)

( _Sam_ ) lurches towards him, one leg twisting fully in its socket. A twitching hand manages to pick up his knife. Dean looks like he’s going to throw up.

( _Sam_ ) is reminded of nature documentaries and parasites blooming from the hollow bodies of their hosts, riding their bodies in a bizzare, left-of-middle fascimile of their real selves. Demons and angels could never debase themselves this way; to them, hosts were nothing but necessary evils, to be worn and thrown away when used. _This_ creature, though…

( _Sam_ ) thinks he might have a chance.

For all that his body is twisted like a pretzel, the hand that places a blade against Dean’s throat is remarkably steady. Dean holds himself stock-still, barely daring to breathe. He isn’t even looking at ( _Sam_ ) anymore, like he’s given up on believing this wreckage of a body could possibly hold him at all.

“ _Dean...._ ” ( _Sam_ ) grates, his jaw audibly creaking.

Dean closes his eyes, waiting for the inevitable. The warm pleasure is now thudding excitement, and the parasite unfurls further along his nerves, feeding.

Sam takes his chance. It only takes a concerted impulse to a few specific group of muscles to change the course of that blade and send it plunging with remarkable force into his own chest. Blood seeps, then pours, then _gushes_ , and the creature recoils, screaming. ( _Sam_ ) crumbles to the floor in a tangle of badly twisted limbs, his chest straining to push out its last few breaths while drowning in blood.

Even through the agony of the creature and the screaming and the twice-removed pain from his own body, Dean’s anguished screams are clear. Sam wishes he could reassure him. Lucifer has promised him that he will live to be the devil’s host, and he has already delivered on that promise before, as many times as Sam has dared to test it. 

He’ll be back, Sam thinks, just as everything starts to tip into black. His body has not yet served its purpose, after all.


	2. Buried Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> summary: sam is trapped, alone and injured, in a forgotten underground cavern. except he isn’t as alone as he thinks.
> 
> warnings: no season-specific spoilers. moderately graphic description of serious injuries. and uhhhhhhhhh it’s very weird. very very weird. i feel like it’s 2011 again and i’m projecting my ennui by writing wonky, utterly baffling spn fic on livejournal.

She moves like the earth moves: tectonic plates crashing into each other with slow, relentless deliberation, glaciers endlessly flowing into rivers, the wind and water cutting valleys through stone. Aeons pass between one blink and the next; around her, nothing and everything changes. She lives now in vast underground caves carved by centuries of erosion. It is teeming with microscopic life in its pools of water and slick surfaces, yet paradoxically untouched by animal or human presence in thousands of years. 

She thinks she was made to protect, once. She was the guardian of a people who have ceased to exist so long ago that the dust from their bones is now among the stars. Every last trace of them is gone, and so is her _purpose_. The earth turns, and turns, and turns, and she grows slow, and alone, and bitter. There is an entire universe above the ground who can never see her, or believe in her, or will her existence into the light ever again. 

(She _wants_ \--)

She feels _angry_. A chasm winds its way through the centre of her home, and each century she wills it deeper and wider, hoping to crack the ground open to the very centre of the earth. Every now and then she is capable of cataclysm, but never enough to crack open a slit in her reality and let the rest of the universe in.

Until now.

-

She sees him clearly, although she is certain that he is utterly blind; the darkness where she lives is almost absolute. She is unsure how and when he managed to get here; only that he did not mean to be. He stumbles and trips and falls and stumbles some more, scraping bloody handprints on walls that haven’t been touched in centuries. He is breathing hard, a wheezy, whistling sound trailing every breath and echoing in the cave. Every now and then he stops to fumble something small and black out of his clothing; he presses furiously at it for a few minutes before shaking his head and moving on as before.

He looks nothing like the tall, long-haired men and women that she remembers; he is… stunted, but perhaps that is normal for humans these days. He is bowed over with pain and exhaustion, hair hanging loose and limp over his face, but he might have been beautiful once. 

He might be beautiful still…

He stops, takes a deep breath, and shouts into the void: “ _DEAN_!”

The cry echoes until it seems like there are a thousand men there, but she knows it is just him; she does not sense another human life for hundreds of miles. She suspects that he knows this as well; he does not even wait for an answer, shouting _DEAN_ over and over again, if only to hear _anything_ at all.

She sends a gust of wind to howl through the space in answer, but it only startles him into silence.

-

His stumbles turn into hesitant, shuffling steps, until he finally collapses to the ground, utterly spent. His lips and the tips of his fingers are blue with cold; mouth dry from thirst. Crusted blood frames at least a dozen visible injuries, and he scratches at them when he can find the energy as they turn red and inflamed and ooze pus.

It isn’t the magnificent sacrifice that she was once used to, but he is meant to be reclaimed by the earth all the same; it will all be over sooner than she can possibly hope to quantify, and she will forget about him as the earth turns, and turns, and turns.

Even so--

(she _wants_ \--)

She drips a steady stream of cool water into his mouth. He is startled awake from near-unconsciousness. 

At first, he turns his head away, distrusting, but despair and desperation finally take over, and he accepts the water. She rumbles, pleased.

-

He doesn’t try to get up again, but he continues to try to talk: _dean, dean, dean_ like an entreaty to a god much more powerful than her. And it must be a powerful god, because there is never any answer, nor the inkling of a miracle; the more powerful you are, the more you get to choose your own sacrifices. 

There is something unusual about this man, though, that she has never sensed before; not even in the humans she once used to protect. It’s in his blood: a low-thrumming sense of _wrongness_ that she’s only ever felt in the chasm that nearly splits her into two. The more she focusses on it, the more she thinks that this man’s presence here cannot possibly be accidental.

Perhaps he did not come from the world above after all.

-

The water keeps him lucid for a few hours, but he quickly slips into delirium, twitching on the ground and muttering mindlessly. The only creatures that can possibly thrive inside her have already started to colonise his wounds; he does not have very long left. 

For the first time in millennia, she feels something other than anger or bitterness; she feels… _disappointed_. Every cracked, bleeding prayer from this man for a miracle has meant _she_ has been praying for a miracle; to know that will die along with him is more crushing than these thousands of years spent in nothingness. The earth turns, and turns, and turns, and although humans exist in it for but a fraction of a minute, they bring with them such hope, and belief, and purpose, that it could fill every crevice in this universe.

It’s just such a pity then, that that hope is so short-lived. 

His voice suddenly grows louder. “Dean?” he says. “Dean, it’s Sam. Can you hear me? _Dean_!”

Slowly, painstakingly, he pushes himself up on his arms. Despite his best efforts, he cannot get his legs underneath him, and so he crawls, pulling himself forward in the dark, inch by infinitesimal inch. “I’m here,” he says, his voice cracking around the words.

She can sense nobody else nearby; he must be hallucinating.

She watches him crawl--first with both arms, then one as the other gives out. His lips never stop moving, even when he does not have the voice for it. Maybe it was wrong to hinge the weight of her eternal existence on this man, or any number of men. Maybe _she_ has hope for all of them, combined.

Hope, now, that this man continues to _live_.

A _purpose_.

A gentle wind blows through her, ruffling his hair, carrying on it a distant, sweet sound: _Sam, I’m here._


	3. Get It Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set after 6.14. sometimes, sam’s wall cracks. and sometimes it isn’t his tortured soul that leaks out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: plenty of swearing. mildly disturbing imagery?

Now, Dean will admit that he’s always had a weird relationship with sleep, but there’s something about _this_ night that’s gotten every muscle in his body on fight-or-flight mode, tense enough to make his jaw hurt and give him a headache. It isn’t as though they’re in the middle of a hunt--Dean’s ostensibly looking for one right now, but he’s focussed on giving them both some down-time, so he’s been driving them to spots as far away from supernatural chatter as he can find. It’s been a year and change since he’s had some quality time with _his_ Sam and not the Terminator that would be happy to sell him for a burger if he was _really_ hungry, and Dean’s going to bask in it as much as he possibly can before some otherworldly fugly comes to fuck it all up.

So, yeah. They’re squarely in the middle of Dean-Mandated Downtime. Fuck, they just spent the evening marathoning _Indiana Jones_ (yes, even the crystal alien one) over pizzas and beer (Sam spent half of it complaining about Dean not getting him the vegetarian pizza like he requested, and _fuck_ if Dean hadn’t missed Sam’s whining) and Dean had gone to bed feeling full and warm like he hadn’t felt in years.

And yet--

Dean snaps his eyes open. The room is utterly quiet except for the soft sound of Sam breathing and the whirring of the motel room’s ancient air conditioner. His knife’s at hand under the pillow and his gun, loaded with silver bullets, is right by his bedside. There are thick salt lines across every entrance and sigils and protective symbols from half a dozen faiths on the walls. Supernaturally speaking they’re in a hermetically sealed bubble. There shouldn’t be anything to worry about. 

There _shouldn’t_.

After a few minutes of lying in bed, rigid, hands clenching and unclenching over bedclothes, Dean squeezes his eyes closed, willing himself to go back to sleep. That’s when he hears it: a soft whimper, like a small animal in pain.

It’s coming from _Sam’s_ bed.

Dean whips off the covers and springs to his feet without even really thinking about it. There’s only a second’s hesitation before he flicks on the light: a second in which he’s seeing Sam writhe on the floor of another motel room, utterly lost in some indescribable hellscape (though Dean has something of an idea about what he _could_ be seeing, doesn’t he?), on the cliff’s edge of _not existing_ at all, ever. Then he mans the fuck up, braces himself for the worst, and flicks the switch on.

Sam’s curled up on his bed, sheets tangled around his legs. He’s sweating, his pillowcase soaked, though the room’s pretty cold. Blood trickles from one nostril in a steady stream.

 _Oh god, please, **no**_ **.** Dean reaches out and roughly shakes his brother’s shoulder though it feels like the world is pitching to one side beneath his feet. “Sam!” he barks. “ _Sam, wake up_!”

Sam opens his eyes and his arm shoots out faster than Dean can follow, his hand gripping Dean’s arm with iron strength. “Get it out,” he grits, “get it out _now_!”

And for all that Dean’s got over twenty years of hunting under his belt and has helped defeat the frickin’ _devil_ , those words make him quake and turn his insides into water. “Sam?” he says helplessly. “Get what out?”

Sam sits up jerkily, his grip never wavering. “This _thing_ ,” he says, thumping a closed fist over his chest, “before it _kills_ us all!”

“Are you--is it--” Dean takes a deep breath, trying to keep his voice level. “Is it the wall?”

Sam looks up at him, his eyes wild with fear. “This _soul_!” he says, his voice raw and grating like he’s been screaming for a long time. “I _told_ you what would happen if you put it back in here like a chewed-up piece of stuffing, but all you could see is the Sam that _you_ wanted, not a Sam without a fucking-- _time-bomb_ in his brain!” He lets go of Dean’s arm, swaying, both hands digging into his sweaty hair.

( _you don’t know what’ll happen to me_ \--)

Dean clenches his jaw. “Sam’s fighting you,” he says, “I know he is, he’s giving you _hell_ \--”

“I _am_ Sam!” Robo-Sam growls. “The only version of Sam that can _survive_. And if you aren’t going to help me, I’m going to find somebody that can.” He gets up and starts stumbling towards the door, movements awkward and jerky like a robot with a short-circuiting motherboard.

 _Like hell you are_. Dean surges forward and tackles Robo-Sam to the ground, only pausing to wince as Robo-Sam’s head meets the floor with a painful _thunk_. The man-creature- _brother_ fights back, palms and fists smacking into Dean’s face, legs kicking out, torso twisting, but it’s all too un-coordinated for it to be effective. Dean has him pinned in no time. He’s panting, though, because halfway-to-hell or not, Sam’s still fucking built like a _tank_ , and Dean’s going to be feeling plenty sore in the morning.

If it means things go back to normal though, Dean’s more than willing to take a few bruises. Hell, probably _worse_.

Robo-Sam’s chest heaves with exertion but he grins. His teeth are smeared with the blood still leaking from his nose. “Your _plan_ ,” he spits, “is _failing_. The next time your so-called Wall slips--and it’s going to be very, very soon--it won’t be me that comes out. And it definitely won’t be the precious brother you’ve gotten enshrined in your gourd. It’ll be so much worse than you can possibly imagine.”

“What happens to Sam,” Dean leans forward, putting more pressure on Robo-Sam’s arms until he’s sure he’s digging bruises into them, “is _none_ of your business.”

Robo-Sam barks a laugh. “It’s a _hell_ of a lot more of my business than yours, considering this is my body, my life, _my soul_! Sam is not yours to keep and garden and cultivate, Dean, I am not _yours_!”

“Shut up!” Dean smacks a fist across Robo-Sam’s jaw, perversely enjoying the way his head snaps to one side. 

Something desperate fleets across Robo-Sam’s face. “I can still be the Sam you desperately wanted back,” he says. “Without the death threat hanging over my head all the time.” He closes his eyes and grinds his head against the floor, his entire body spasming. “I can learn to be what you need me to be--I was doing it for months before you had a _clue_!”

Dean thinks of Sam as cool and calculating, crafting every word and expression to make sure he was hitting all the right _Sam_ notes, and how off-putting, how _frightening_ it was to watch those efforts fail every time. He can’t bear to think that that’s all he would ever have of Sam--a soulless husk that only barely remembers to be the man that Dean has loved all his life.

“No,” Dean says, pressing an elbow across Sam’s neck, and continuing to press even as Sam stops struggling, stops gasping for breath, stops being conscious. He only lifts his arm when Sam’s lips start turning blue.

He gets up, stumbles to the bathroom, and throws up an evening’s worth of crappy pizza into the toilet.

He waits by Sam on the floor until it’s morning and Sam wakes up, very sore and very confused. Dean itches to hug him, but it feels wrong, somehow, like he’ll touch Sam and something in him will shift or break, like a wonky kaleidoscope. If Sam has to be--and remain-- _his_ Sam, then Dean… well, Dean will have to be careful.

Which means… downtime’s come to an end. 

“Come on, we gotta hunt,” Dean says, walking to the Impala, not quite ready to look back at who’s following him.


	4. Isolated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> set early s14. 
> 
> the Bunker is full of secrets. and so very, very old. 
> 
> aka: sam really shouldn’t be going exploring on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings: mild early s14 spoilers. uhhh... body horror? more creepy than straightforward whump.

The first time that Sam thinks _oh, it’s been a while since I’ve been outside_ , it isn’t really surprising; the Bunker is so large and his workload so heavy that sometimes it’s weeks before he even thinks about stepping out. Besides, people are always coming in and out of the place looking for resources and information, and Sam hasn’t felt like this, like he _belongs_ to something bigger than just him and his family in a car, in a long, long time. 

When he’s not researching or training, he’s exploring. The maps to the Bunker that he found in the MOL’s archives are surprisingly incomplete; on the days that he decides to tour the Bunker by himself, he discovers doors and rooms that are definitely _not_ marked on any of the maps. It makes him wonder if the MOL built the Bunker at all, or if it’s something they just… found, and occupied. For all the research and incredible spellwork that’s gone into building the Bunker into what it is today, the whole place just…thrums with an energy that reminds Sam of all the places he’s been that no mortal should be able to remember. The Cage, for one, or the space between universes, for another. It’s that feeling of reality being stretched into a thin veneer over a howling, ineffable abyss full of things he was never designed to sense. 

It should feel horrifying, but it’s weirdly comforting. Sam doesn’t really know what to make of this.

Most of the unmarked rooms that he finds are empty, plain and brightly-lit like much of the rest of the Bunker. Some of them are filled with old books written in arcane languages that Sam can’t recognise, leave alone understand. Sam opens each of them and runs his fingers over the words anyway, and when he does that, the words shift and change. Ink clings to his fingertips, staining them a deep black that never fades or goes away, no matter how many times he washes his hands. 

It’s unnerving, but Sam doesn’t tell anyone. And he doesn’t stop going back.

These tours start taking longer and longer, until he starts emerging from them to find out that days have passed by. At least, that’s what Dean tells him--Sam has trouble telling time on the Bunker even on the best of days, its bright yellow lights unchanging through night and day. Dean’s worried at first, but Sam is usually able to mollify him with an excuse about ‘researching’, which Dean does not question any further. Nothing satisfies Dean quite like things and people occupying the places he’s designated for them in his world, so if Sam is researching… well, he’s researching. That’s what he’s supposed to do.

The rooms get bigger and weirder as time goes on. Usually they are dead silent, the only sounds being the rustle of Sam’s clothes, the scrape of his shoes on the floor and his soft breathing. He’s never seen a sign of a living thing in any of them, whether it’s cobwebs or rodents or even the yellowing of pages or the wearing of wooden shelves: it’s like these rooms have been forgotten by time itself, or any of its attendant changes. 

Some rooms, though, look shaggier: the paint is peeling off, sometimes so thin that he can see the shapes of things just beneath his surface. Sometimes these are faces, just faded enough that he can’t make out distinct features, and other times it’s the impressions of hands, or feet, or legs. In those rooms he can hear a strange hum--the sound of multiple voices whispering all at once. It’s difficult to make out what they’re saying, but even when he catches some words, they aren’t in any language that he knows.

Sam has spent enough time in haunted places (and wrangling with psychotic breaks) to be startled by hearing voices come out of nowhere. He keeps moving, undeterred. It isn’t until he enters a room where a perfectly formed human eye framed by two bookshelves on either side of it _looks_ at him and _blinks_ , that he drops whatever he’s holding and flees.

Still, he doesn’t stay away for long.

He stops trying to read, or listen, and just… walks. Watches. He sees more eyes following him as he walks by, the ways the corners of the rooms bulge and warp, like they have formed _around_ something. He sees the way those bulges _pulse_ to the rhythm of his heart, and observes the way the whispers turn into screams the deeper he walks into the Bunker. He observes the way his own pulse picks up, the churn at the pit of his stomach, how his muscles tense and the sweat forming at the nape of his neck and trickling down his spine, as though it is happening to somebody else. The only thing Sam can feel through layers and layers of muffled nothingness is the need to keep moving--to find the place where this place _ends_.

It takes him longer and longer to come back to the map room of the Bunker. He’s not seen Mary or Castiel or Bobby or any of the other hunters in months. Dean’s… there, but it’s hard to hear him these days, what with Sam’s ears constantly ringing with over a dozen voices at any time. Dean shouts, breaks chairs, brandishes his gun, holds Sam’s shoulders and shakes him, and Sam thinks he sees Dean crying once, but it’s… hard to be sure. 

Dean tries to lock Sam in his room several times. Sam always finds a door.

At one point, Sam can’t find his way back to the map room anymore, and he never sees Dean again.

His hands are entirely black now, all the way to the wrist. They drop off at some point, bloody stumps trailing red along the corridor as he walks. He looks back to see the twin lines of blood, if they would mark his way out of this labyrinth. As he watches, the blood disappears into the floor, until it’s like it was never there at all. 

Sam stops looking back.

The deeper he goes, the more it seems like the corridors and rooms are _breathing_ , gently contracting and expanding in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Arms reach from the walls to grab at him, fingers wiggling uselessly in thin air. The whisper-screams are now mournful moans, the pain in them beyond the need for language. The part of Sam’s mind that’s not completely numb thinks: _Abaddon can’t have killed every single one of the MOL._

 _The MOL didn’t build this_.

The Bunker is so very, very old--

More of Sam breaks off, turns to dust then nothingness in the stone around him. One of the arms reaching out from the wall manages to grab his ankle and break his leg clean off his body. Sam barely feels it; he crawls with his elbows and then on his belly. He can’t hear anymore; he can barely see. His jaw feels wired shut. 

And he--

still--

moves on--

Because this ends _some_ where, and Sam will find it. Even if it means never seeing a single soul again. Even if every thought is chased by a memory of Lucifer doing exactly this to him, dissolving his body in stone, scattering his atoms across the expanse of the earth and pulling him together wrong time and time and time again. Even if it means… nothing at all, in the end.

The Bunker breathes.


End file.
